Furloughed civilians: Ogden already feels pinch from defense cuts

Troy Green, of Froerer Property Management in Ogden, discusses early indications from his clients that the automatic budget cuts are going to take a hit on Ogden's economy.

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Summary

Experts differ over the likely impact of the budget sequester as a whole, but with furloughs now expected for 11,500 civilian DOD employees at Ogden's Hill Air Force Base, ripples are already hitting the city's real estate market.

“We are accommodating ourselves to deep dysfunction at significant cost to the economy, for no other reason than that policy makers refuse to compromise.”

Jared Bernstein

OGDEN — Last week, Troy Green was shocked to find himself on the front line of the federal budget wars — not in Washington, D.C., but in Ogden, Utah.

A property manager, Green had just learned of impending furloughs at Hill Air Force base. Two days later, he began getting calls from tenants — some trying to figure out how they will cover their rent on reduced pay, others backing out of long-term lease plans.

“They’re in limbo,” Green said. “They want to lease for a year and then buy the home. But they can’t do either one now.”

With Washington in a furor over efforts to forestall the automatic budget cuts set to kick in today, their immediate impact is already being felt at places like Hill Air Force Base, which currently employs 11,500 civilian DOD employees, according to Richard Essary, a base spokesman.

If this continues, Green fears, “People coming into Hill Air Force Base are not going to buy homes and become part of the community.” It’s the uncertainty that Green finds most troublesome, with his clients unable to plan, sink roots, or move on with their lives.

Even setting aside the impact on everyday lives, the budget cuts at Hill have serious implications for military readiness, said Dave Hardman, president of the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce, who understandably has a deep interest in the affairs of the base.

One of Hill’s primary roles, Hardman said, is to maintain vital but aging planes, including the venerable F-16 fighter, many of which are well past their life expectancy and only kept in shape through vigorous maintenance. Much of the civilian work at Hill, Hardman said, is airplane maintenance.

Keeping the F-16 going, Hardman said, is all the more critical because “we lack the political will to pay for the F35s that are scheduled to replace them.”

Flight training will also be hit. “They have restricted flight of all military aircraft to mission-based flights, so the everyday training missions are going to curtailed,” Hardman said.

Advocates on the left and the right disagree on how to balance spending cuts and new taxes to forge a sustainable path. But there is little disagreement that across-the-board spending cuts under current law are a strange way to get there.

“Let us not forget that this is nuts,” said Jared Bernstein, a fellow at the Center on Budget Priorities and budget adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. “We are accommodating ourselves to deep dysfunction at significant cost to the economy, for no other reason than that policy makers refuse to compromise.”

In the crosshairs

Shortly after the 2011 debt ceiling deal, now known as “the sequester,” was signed into law, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared that the proposed cuts would “hollow out” the U.S. military.

Last week, he announced that the hollowing had begun, declaring that while military personnel are exempt, “we have no legal authority to exempt civilian personnel funding from reductions.” If sequestration is not averted, he said, “(The Department of Defense) will be forced to place the vast majority of its civilian work force on administrative furlough.”

The projected weekly one-day furloughs for civilian DoD emloyees, which would kick in on 30 days notice as early as April, amount to a 20 percent pay cut.

According to the terms of the 2011 compromise, fully half of the sequester cuts must come from defense — even though defense accounts for just 19 percent of the discretionary budget on the table.

Popular Comments

Re: "(The Department of Defense) will be forced to place the vast majority
of its civilian work force on administrative furlough.”

But,
it's important to note -- it's being forced to do so, NOT by the cuts,
themselves,
More..

5:56 a.m. March 1, 2013

Top comment

Say No to BO

Mapleton, UT

Washington bureaucrats are making the cuts that will hurt the most and get the
most ink.One tv station in Chicago is reporting that the federal
courthouse may need to shut down one day a week and halt civil cases
altogether.A newspaper
More..

7:50 a.m. March 1, 2013

Top comment

mohokat

Ogden, UT

@procuradorfiscal "But, it's important to note -- it's being
forced to do so, NOT by the cuts, themselves, but by the Obama
administration's eagerness to make them as painful to America as
possible." You have it exactly
More..

Eric Schulzke writes on national politics and policy for the Deseret News and directs The Apollo 13 Project, a prisoner reentry awareness initiative at Utah Valley University. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at more ..